High Level one shot

[Saintjebus]

So, I come to the playground again for assistance. I need ideas for a lvl 15 one shot. I will have a random mix of players(this is for a gaming convention.) I'm not familiar with high level play in 3.5, so I would like some ideas for a well rounded one shot adventure. Thanks!

[Draz74]

Look through the One Page Dungeon Codex 2009 and see if there are any that are geared for Level 15.

[jiriku]

I don't have any fully-fleshed ideas for you, but here are some basic things to be aware of if you've never run high-level games before:

High-level characters are difficult to challenge. Players can teleport, fly, and plane shift, so don't expect doors, walls, long distances, or even planar boundaries to slow them down significantly.

They also have significant access to divination magic, and formidable knowledge skill bonuses, so you can't keep a secret for long. Once they figure out the right questions to ask, they can pretty easily acquire any arbitrary piece of information.

Also, their options are so great that you cannot predict what solution they will attempt to a particular problem. Present them with an enemy army attacking their town, and they may fight the army, dominate the commanders and take over the army, or use powerful illusion magic to hide the town from detection. You never can tell.

Because of this, location-based adventures and mystery-based adventures are extremely difficult to run. A better idea is to create adventures involving activities and tasks.

"Delve to the bottom of the Dungeon of Doom" will probably be accomplished in about 15 minutes, teleporting to the final room, bypassing 90% of your encounters, and waxing your end-boss while he's still brushing his teeth in the morning.

"Recover the dingus, present it to the king, attend the royal ball, win the favor of the generals, rally the troops, and crush the invading army" will probably be a pretty successful game, since it's not possible (or is very difficult) to bypass encounters.

[Logalmier]

In short, look out for casters, especially optimized ones, and plan ahead so that they don't ruin your BBEG when he's still in his pajamas.